


Not So Halloween

by TheGoldenShadow



Category: Miraculous Ladybug
Genre: Childhood Memories, Childhood Trauma, F/F, Halloween, Halloween Costumes, Haunted Houses, spooky scary
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-22
Updated: 2020-11-22
Packaged: 2021-03-10 00:28:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,198
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27674720
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheGoldenShadow/pseuds/TheGoldenShadow
Summary: It was the absolute worst time of year, no matter how much effort Manon or Alya put into trying to convince Marinette otherwise. Were there sweets? Sure. Marinette could get behind sweets. It was hard to not care about sweets when your family’s whole business was cakes and confectionary. Even ignoring that, there was a lot to love about sweets and very few things in the world that could even come close to making them unappealing.Except Halloween.
Relationships: Chloé Bourgeois & Marinette Dupain-Cheng | Ladybug
Comments: 1
Kudos: 12





	Not So Halloween

**Author's Note:**

> A new commission from jacobgross555 on fiver!

Marinette hated Halloween.

“You are going to look _so cute_ , I swear.”

It was the absolute _worst_ time of year, no matter how much effort Manon or Alya put into trying to convince Marinette otherwise. Were there sweets? Sure. Marinette could get behind sweets. It was hard to _not_ care about sweets when your family’s whole business was cakes and confectionary. Even ignoring that, there was a lot to love about sweets and very few things in the world that could even come close to making them unappealing.

Except Halloween.

And there were costumes! Everyone got to dress up in silly outfits and go out into a strange new world where everyone else was dressed up in clothing just as ridiculous. You could prance around as a pony or go out and tickle your friend’s funny bone as a walking skeleton. There was nothing _not_ to love about dressing up in funny costumes and Marinette doubted she would ever think otherwise.

Except on Halloween.

Then there were all the spooks and scares. All the ties to horror and the macabre that insisted on squeezing into what could have otherwise been a very pleasant holiday. Like an orange and black Christmas, or an even colder Easter.

Marinette hated those particular aspects regardless. Halloween just made it so that everyone else thought they were perfectly acceptable.

Screw Halloween.

Marinette wasn’t doing Halloween. She refused.

“Sweetie?”

_Refused!_

“Sweetie,” Chloé repeated. “Marinette, sweetie. You need to finish up your costume. I want to see you in the ears.”

Yes…

Yes. Of course, she did.

Marinette forced a wide, toothy smile as she turned to face her girlfriend. “O-okay! No problem!” It was just a costume. That wasn’t technically for Halloween, right? “Definitely not a problem at all.”

Even… even if it did mean that taking part would come at some point after.

“Now would be good,” Chloé quickly added. “We do need to leave my house at some point.”

Whether Chloé knew the true reason for Marinette’s hatred of Halloween or not was utterly irrelevant. When Chloé had an idea, it meant she wanted to act on it. And when Chloé Bourgeois wanted to act on something, there was little in the way you could do to stop her.

“S-sure! Sure thing.”

It wasn’t like Chloé was all that keen on Halloween either, if Marinette was being honest with herself. All the reasons that Marinette _should_ have liked Halloween didn’t apply to Chloé. Mostly. Except the most important one.

Instead, it was the more social aspects that appealed.

Parties

Masquerade balls.

Seeing everyone come out for the night.

And… getting a kick out of seeing who was most likely to curl up under their covers and wait the whole ordeal out until the next morning.

Marinette was very much in the latter category. Somewhat of an issue if your girlfriend was the biggest socialite of the age group. Or in all of Paris, depending on who you asked. And particularly fond of being a bit cruel if someone didn’t calm her down in time.

Whoever she asked (and whatever Chloé wanted to do) Marinette dearly wished she could just sit this one night out. If there was _any_ night that Chloé could let her miss, it would be this one.

Marinette would do birthdays. She would babysit some actual babies or go with Chloé to one of her gaudy fashion shows. She’d visit that high-end lingerie store that Chloé kept hinting that she would love to visit with Marinette and some point. She would even allow Chloé to _buy_ something for if, if it came right down to the wire.

Just so long as she could skip Halloween.

Alas, Chloé was not a mind reader. And if she was, Marinette doubted she’d listen to any of her deep-seated objections. “I seriously can’t wait! You are going to look _so_ adorable.”

… But neither had Marinette asked to skip out on the holiday, and as Chloé always said: those who didn’t ask, didn’t get.

Chloé had asked her to wear a bunny costume.

Chloé _had_ asked, and so Chloé received. As much as Marinette could have declined, it felt… wrong Like shewas giving up, or admitting defeat. Especially to someone she had been seeing for several months.

The first few had been shaky. That would always be the case when you went from enemies to dating in a single step.

It meant you had to break down the walls and walk over the rubble, just to get momentum in the first place. It meant taking a running leap off a cliff and hoping that this person – despite all logic – would indeed be waiting to catch you at the bottom.

It meant changing your definition of trust in an instant.

But something as honest as the confession Marinette had received was hard to completely accept as anything other than genuine, so a single chance had been given.

So far, it had been worth it. Even if the teething problems that had existed before dating still took a few weeks to smooth at. As a start.

It turned out that having your girlfriend disapprove of your crueller aspects was a prime incentive to curb them. Who knew?

Chloé still often proved to be a puzzle in need of solving, however. And many aspects of her life and personality needed adapting to.

Such as the request to wear a bunny suit.

When Marinette had been told that Chloé had purchased a bunny costume for her, certain… risqué preconceptions had arisen. When you think bunny suits, you think sexy. When you think of bunny suits and Halloween you think… less polite words than sexy, but the overall themes remain the same.

You think of stockings, you think of the lingerie. You think of the big ears and the tight clothes and the way that everything just feels like _more_ when you’re stuffed inside an outfit that feels like _less._

Something that would have felt… revealing? Was that even the right word? Too open, or too risqué. Something that was too much for Marinette’s tastes. In public, at the very least.

A fluffy number with big floppy ears and a cotton tail? Not so much.

It wasn’t sexy. It wasn’t flamboyant or revealing. If anything, jeans would be more revealing. A coat and jacket with boots would be more revealing than the costume Chloé had picked out for her.

This left so much to the imagination that Marinette could have parading around with five breasts and a beer belly without even the slightest hint that anything was remotely amiss.

It was big.

It was kiddy.

It felt… a little too appropriate. It felt like the sort of things Marinette was expected to wear for Halloween. Something soft for the girl who could somehow save the entire city from beings that some would literally call monsters… but had little in the way of _anything_ she could competently handle when it came to Halloween.

Like someone was coating her in bubble wrap to make sure absolutely nothing could hurt her.

Pulling up the big bunny hood, Marinette felt she’d be more dignified wrapped up in bubble wrap.

“Aww, Sweetie!”

At least she would feel disproportionally silly, not appropriately so.

And given Chloé’s general distaste for anyone and anything that got remotely scared for Halloween, Marinette felt… conflicted, to say the least. Not to mentioned confused.

Chloé had her hair up in a deceptively complex ponytail, one designed very much to look matted and appropriately decayed. She’d hired a makeup artist to add a few spots of ruptured skin and exposed muscle. She’d paid through the nose for the chance to dress as an undead ‘Lady of the Manor’ and despite it all… Marinette had to admit that she still looked gorgeous. Each addition to her outfit, each false rot added to the skin was placed to not implicate her face. It kept her shapely body on show and avoided anything overly grotesque.

Chloé was going for creepy with a dash of scary. Not digesting and realistic.

Again, even more confusing, considering she’d chosen something so _soft_ for Marinette by comparison. Or by comparison to any costume they’d likely see, for that matter.

But dressed as a bunny Marinette was, and there was no going back now.

“It _is_ cute,” she admitted, however. “Not quite what I expected when you said bunny suit, though.”

“Yeah, like you would wear an actual bunny suit outside.”

Marinette threw her a vaguely confused look, one that Chloé seemed to immediately interpret as hurt.

“Not in a bad way, or whatever!” she added, hands raised. “Just… you know, you’re not really into sexy stuff. And if I can’t look at something sexy, I thought I’d have something cute.”

Then again, Chloé was relatively new to reading emotions, so Marinette supposed it was worth a pass. And the reasoning was… rather nice.

Even if there were a thousand other things Chloé could have interpreted as cute that were better than a bunny suit. Exactly how disinterest in sexy did Chloé think she was? A princess would have been nice, at least. Or any costume that didn’t like it belong to an advert for overpriced chocolate eggs.

But Marinette wasn’t one to argue the finer points against Chloé. Being this thoughtful as a start and coming off as annoyed in response would only set Chloé back.

And a nice Chloé was lovely. More than lovely, in fact. Even Sabrina had noted the change as one for the better. Even if the girl still acted a bit more submissive that she should around a good friend.

Baby steps, Marinette mused.

“I suppose I can get behind that,” Marinette eventually answered, her words truthful. “Thanks.”

“You are very welcome,” she replied. Another new addition. “… It wasn’t a weird choice, right?”

_Ah._

Now Marinette understood.

Chloé had gone for cute… and made sure that it was definitely cute and not discernible as anything else. Either Chloé had went directly to the very end of the spectrum, or she’d worked her way down from sexy to Easter Bunny by process of elimination. As warped as her process of elimination seemed to be.

She was trying to accommodate. Just not very well.

But Marinette wasn’t about to say that to her girlfriend.

“No! No, it’s cute.” No stutters or hints to imply otherwise, either. Nice. “You did good.”

And then the confidence was back in full force, lighting up Chloé’s face like a polished golf crown.. “Of course I did. I’m pretty amazing, like that.”

“Especially the pretty part.”

“Aww, thanks Sweetie.”

A small peck on the cheek was Marinette’s reward. Chloé stood back, her eyes catching on something on the table.

“Oh, the nose. Do you want the little nose?”

It was a bunny mask, made from felt with a little pink nose and puffy white fluff beneath. Complete with a set of symmetrical whiskers at either side.

It just kept getting worse, didn’t it? “Yeah…” Marinette mumbled. But when Chloé’s face began to fall in apparent realisation, the tune changed. “Sure! Have to complete the costume, right?”

For the time being at least, Chloé’s responsive smile was worth it.

“Definitely knew I made the right choice,” she replied.

And Marinette would keep it that way.

“Now we can finally get going.”

… Or maybe it would be better taking a trip to that lingerie store, after all. Maybe she could keep Chloé distracted for enough of the evening to skip out on Halloween entirely.

\- -

As Chloé’s limo came to a steady halt outside festival grounds, Marinette supposed that there was little chance her plan was going to work. Even if she had the lingerie at that very moment, there was little to gain from enthralling Chloé without embarrassing herself in public.

Nothing short of an emergency phone call was going to get her to leave. Or maybe a convenient Evilization somewhere in the distance?

The seconds passed…

…

…

And there was not.

Thus, her fate was sealed.

“Finally,” Chloé said with a huff. “Thought we never going to get here.” Then a brief pause. “No offence?”

“None taken.” _Yet._ If anything, Marinette was offended at herself for even getting this close to a Halloween party.

Then they were out of the limo. Then they were over the threshold of the festivities. The smell of sickly-sweet concoctions and popcorn filled the air, matched only by the likes of the excited chatter drifting through every conceivable space that was left.

The cackled recording of a witch sounded somewhere in the distance, followed by the brief wail of a little girl.

There was no going back now.

To call the place a fair wouldn’t be quite correct. Stalls lined several streets, a variety of games, sweets and activities on show for anyone to enter. But further in, in the open plazas were larger crowds dancing to popular music, each with a stereotypical spooky undertone for the holiday at hand.

A stage held a costumed DJ, and stand dotted around the edge served drinks… if you had the identification to prove you could handle it.

Marinette was sure that Chloé could ‘convince’ proprietors around the city to sell her some alcohol, but Marinette didn’t quite like the idea of drinking on Halloween. It was awkward enough getting scared while sober, let lone when she got more than a little tipsy.

But that never happened. And for the first few hours, everything went as a normal night would have.

They met friends in the grand mosh-pet of death, they had food. Marinette had tried a few of the games, only to have Chloé buy her the prizes from the vendors when she lost. It defeated the entire purpose, but as always, the thought counted.

Especially so, when it came to Chloé.

They saw Sabrina, they saw Alya and Manon. They saw Juleka holding hands with Rose when the two girls thought there was no one else paying them much attention.

Chloé was the opposite, however. She flaunted what she had, and that included Marinette. Anywhere they went, Marinette was dragged by the hand. If not to keep her girlfriend close, then to show her off to anyone that got in their way.

Given Chloé’s headstrong attitude, the latter occurred far more than the former.

But that was fine. Ladybug had to flourish in the spotlight by her very nature, and that gave Marinette the chance to grow used to it too. It was different when it you, however. That was a much rawer feeling compared to being dressed up as a superhero. No one quite knew who you were when you were transformed. People actively found it hard to consciously link Ladybug to anyone who looked remotely similar. A perk of the Miraculous, Master Fu had told her once.

The attention remained, however. And Ladybug had to adapt.

Marinette had adapted too, just at a slower pace. With her own face, there was no escaping to another life when things got hard. She had to make do with what she had, and the best way to do that was to battle things head on.

Most of the time.

When she was sure that it would work out.

Maybe.

But once again, Chloé did what she wanted. And when Chloé did what she wanted, you had to go along with her or risk getting burned.

“Oh my God, a haunted house!” she laughed, something demeaning slipping in to her voice. “Really? At something this size?”

Nope.

“You’d think they’d leave that at the kiddy section with all the games and shit.”

She was disinterested, that was good.

“You wouldn’t catch me dead in one of these.”

Was this what love felt like?

“Oh, wait. No! We should _totally_ go in.”

Is this what heartbreak felt like?

“I want to see how pathetic this whole thing is. I bet they’re all volunteers in really cheap outfits.”

This was definitely what heartbreak felt like. Chloé would feel it too when Marinette finally had a heart attack and died where she stood, towered over by a monster that likely looked entirely homemade and precious to everyone except her,

“I can’t believe people actually find this shit scary. Maybe little kids. Like, really little kids.”

Marinette had been one of those little kids, once.

As far as she could remember, she hadn’t disliked Halloween as child, per say. She had enjoyed the sweets, she had enjoyed the chance to go to school and dress up with everyone else. She had enjoyed all the colours and the cartoons and the little things that got spread around the city when the season came around. The brittle crisp of orange leave and the mulch of brown ones after a thunderstorm.

It had been pleasant. Then there was the year that her dad had taken her to the mall and the spooky event they were having for kids.

Looking back, it was relatively mundane, compared to what Marinette dealt with in her life now. It was a pop-up haunted house and some streamer hung from the ceiling. Plastic skeletons and bats that wouldn’t fool a new-born puppy and sweets decorated in orange wrappers with spiders on top.

But it was the one the mall was showing off, so parents were obligated to take their children, lest they suffer a slow death by whining and crying.

Marinette had been curious, but more so for the sweets she could get afterwards. The decorations were not scary, nor were they particular well made. They were there, and the aesthetic was all that really registered.

Then she had the chance to go into the haunted house. It was small, built over the door to one of the shops and the inside redecorated accordingly. If anything, it was one long trail around several aisles, with one or two optional turns that made the trip quicker if you knew the route beforehand.

Marinette had not known the route beforehand, so followed the markers along floor. The ones for the youngest kids so they didn’t get lost.

That would have been the end of it, really. She would have wandered through, got a few spooks and found the exit, right before she was given her little bag of sweets and a small toy in a little pumpkin bag.

It had indeed gone that simply until she reached the back wall of the store. After a smooth straight, you were to turn right. A few people she didn’t recognise had dressed as witches and mummies in toilet paper beforehand and it had been funny. It had been adults doing something silly, and that was the best thing in the world when you were well under ten. Adults never did anything funny, except on the odd holidays in which they did.

One adult had been particular into it.

As Marinette had rounded the corner, a figure had popped out. If he had been dressed as another witch, or a unicorn or something equally as silly then there would likely have been nothing special about the day at all. It would have faded into Marinette’s memory like so many other childhood moments.

But this figure had tried too hard for the role.

The specifics were lost on Marinette over the years. She remembered a suit, or something equally as black and tight fitting. Maybe it had stripes or a pattern, but the main she had noticed were the claws. Long, fake fingers like twigs hung from the tips of a dead tree. The lights overhead had cast them along the walls and the guy moved like he was being paid way more for it than he actually was.

And there was the mask. It went over his face… and that was it. If full body suits had been a thing back then - and she had put off checking if they were – then he had been wearing one. As a result, there were no eyes, no nose. No mouth or any identifiable features.

And the lights overhead only emphasised the fact when he jumped at her, rounding his corner and screaming down at her.

Maybe he had been expecting an older kid. Maybe she had taken too long and the visitors after Marinette had been his prey of choice.

But in that moment, the little girl didn’t think about any of that. She hadn’t been conscious of any of that.

She had just screamed, running back the way she had come.

And when she did, the witches suddenly seemed all too real. They rubber masks and long warty noses felt sickly, and their wigs utterly real.

The mummy moved too slowly, it’s motions too dead to be alive.

So, she had run around another corner in the little maze. If it had led to the exit, she might have recovered.

It did not lead to the exit. It led to a man in a black costume with long fingers. A man that Marinette later knew to simply be confused and guilt-ridden. But when he raised his hands in defence, he hadn’t appeared that way at all.

He was coming to get her, and she couldn’t away.

Whether Marinette did anything worth noting in the following minutes was lost on her. Maybe she supressed it, or it wasn’t as memorable as her first few minutes inside the house, but she remembered her dad carrying her out to the car, one arm beneath her and the other wrapped around her back.

She remembered not sleeping for a few days, or maybe a week. It was had to tell, trying to remember things that happened when you were a little kid.

You never knew if you were exaggerating certain points whilst supressing the others.

But she remembered the house and she remembered the Man with Long Hands. And with them, she lost any chance that dressing up and going out at night for free sweets was ever going to be fun

Separately, she still loved all the aspects. But together, they brought something sickly to the top of her stomach, and it gurgled away with each passing evening until Halloween was finally over.

But now she was stuck in the middle of Halloween with a girlfriend who wanted to laugh at how ridiculous it all was.

How cruel a mistress fate was. After all the good Marinette had done for Paris too.

“Marinette?”

And the universe seemed hell bent on ensuring she went along with it all.

“Y-yeah?”

“You’ve just been standing there. For like, a minute.”

Think of something witty. Think of something witty. “Just trying to imagine how _unscary_ the whole thing is going to be. Yes.” Amazing. “I’m not even sure it’s going to be worth our time. If anything, we should leave and never give it a second thought.”

“No, I’m seeing this. I need a good laugh.”

There _was_ one final card that Marinette could play. She could tell Chloé that it would be mean to laugh at the haunted house, and the people who were running it. That it would kind of horrible to do that next to her girlfriend.

Chances were, Chloé would take it to heart, at least a little. Think she’s doing something _bad_ and try to backtrack on how she was never going to be mean about it.

But that in itself didn’t sit well with Marinette either, almost as much as the thought of going inside the haunted house. It was manipulative, and underhanded. It was the sort of thing that Chloé might have done several months ago, when she wanted something that someone was trying very hard not to give her.

Marinette hadn’t liked it in Chloé then, and she doubted that she would be able to stomach it in herself right now.

“As long as you don’t laugh at the volunteers,” was all she said in the end. Damn her superhero tendencies.

“Oh. Sure, yeah. I can do that,” Chloé replied. “I just want to see how bad it is.”

Baby steps. “O-okay.”

As they walked forward, Marinette could see her untimely death steadily approaching. Maybe if she lived life as a zombie, all of this wouldn’t seem so bad.

They paid.

They waited their turn.

“You’re up,” a tired woman said and then they were setting their first foot inside.

Worries aside, it was a well-done place. Unlike the cruddy house she’d been tormented in as a child, this one was built to purpose. It was an actual haunted house, constructed to be as such and the sort that likely packed up shop and drove somewhere else the next day to break some other unlucky children.

The floors well rubbers, patterned with a wood texture, but the walls were layered with paper, with paintings drawn every few steps to add to the appeal. It was cheap, but a decent kind of cheap. The sort that you ignored for the low price you paid to get inside.

Chloé thought so too. “They don’t even have real paintings on the wall. And they’re the same five each time.”

Marinette had paid enough attention to know that much, but she didn’t doubt the claim. The paintings were not her primary concern.

Speakers lined the ceiling, emitting odd sounds and the scrapping of metal against hard surfaces. The odd voice whispering in the dark, saying something ineligible but all the creepier for it.

Acknowledging the speakers was easy. Ignoring the ambience, they created, less so.

The rubber floors stopped all potential squeaks and announcements of presence, but that played into the favour of the house; you couldn’t scare yourself, but you couldn’t hear anyone else coming.

Moving further into the first hall, Marinette was just waiting for that first person to jump out at her.

“it isn’t even scary yet,” Chloé moaned. “I could do this with my phone and the lights turned way down.”

“Y-yeah,” Marinette agreed. Her teeth were clenched, her lips straight. “It’s pretty pathe-”

A painting to her left moved.

And of course, she screamed. “- _ticaaaaaaaah_! Oh, shit no-”

The mouth opened wide and a deep, curdling laugh played out from inside. The eyes spun, the voice growing higher with each passing second until it all just stopped.

But when Chloé kept quiet, a change of pace was in order.

“- Noh ho, ho! Ho! Ha, wow!” Marinette forced, her fists clenched. Or they would be, if her bunny gloves allowed it. “Ha! _That was funny._ Wasn’t that funny, Chloé?”

“I saw it coming a mile away. It’s the only painting that isn’t _literally_ painted onto the wall. I give it a two out of ten. One of those points is for trying.”

“A million miles away!”

Then came the first corner. Someone was going to jump out. It was par for the course. But knowing it was coming was half the battle. Marinette would take that half and work with it.

They stepped forward.

They turned…

No one was there.

_Oh, thank God._ No monsters, no spooks. Marinette breathed an empty sigh of relief.

Until a door opened silently behind them. She could see the movement in the corner of her, just ever so slightly out of focus.

But by then it was too late to stop. The _creature_ screamed, something covered in fur with a face that _had no right being on a fluffy body what the heck was that even it had mandibles._

“I saw the door,” Chloé mumbled.

Marinette kept her smile going. If she let it go, she feared it would never come back. “She saw the door!”

And so, it continued. Little corners and little jump scares which likely took so little effort to set up that they weren’t worth the time of most customers. People paid to see the monsters jump out, not see the candles move on their own, or the projects of a moving face on a statue

_They eyes were still following her, Marinette was so sure of it._

Then there was a witch, her arms and legs chained.

A mummy, its bandages more that simple toilet paper; fabric crusted by dirt and the passage of time. Or some good teabags, some glue and some dirty sand.

It followed a pattern that Marinette didn’t like. It topped the witch in her plastic outfit, or the mummy in a few strips of toilet paper and a one-piece costume that had the rest drawn on. It more lucid, more real.

These felt like _things_ , not people I tacky costumes.

_Why couldn’t they be dressed up like a bunny like her. She would swap._

_God, she would swap._

The bunny gloves meant that she couldn’t quite clench her first… but that also meant that Chloé couldn’t feel how hard she would definitely be squeezing her hand if they were dressed up. The bulk of the outfit dulled her shiver and the little nose hid the twitch in her face each time something caught her off guard just that little bit too late.

They must have been near the end now, surely?

One last turn suggested… yes.

It was a long corridor, one that lead to the outside. At the end was a curtain, specks of light filtering in between a gap at the bottom. The smells of the fair returned, as did the muffled noise of chatter and children eating food.

She had done it.

She was going to do it.

Marinette had got through the haunted house and nothing had happened. Chloé was at her side, evidentially unimpressed and none the wiser.

Marinette had succeeded. She-

She heard the sound of a chainsaw as another door behind them opened.

The figure stood still, waiting for them to react. It was just a man, she told herself. A man dressed in bloodied dungarees and a burlap bag pulled over his head. With a dirty shirt and dark gloves that would help him so much in gripping her arm. She imagined the fingers growing, each buzz of the chainsaw extending them and extending them until the were just about ready to reach her throat. She couldn’t hear him breathe. The sounds above them had ceased and the noise of the fair was drowned by the revving of a very sharp machine.

So Marinette did the only thing she could think to do.

She screamed.

Her hand pulled away from Chloé in an instant and she was gone. She was pushing herself towards the curtain and towards the light and she wouldn’t stop until she reached either.

The buzzing of the chainsaw faded the further she got, the hall growing far longer than it had any real right to be. She heard her name called out, the voice familiar but she couldn’t tell. She just wanted to get away.

Marinette burst into the fading light of Paris, a member of staff offering something vaguely similar to, “thank your for visiting!” before that too fell into the numb haze of silence that now surrounded her.

She didn’t know where she was going. Where was she meant to go?

She was outside, she was free.

But the pressure that had built up since she’d taken her first step inside pushed her forward, a terrified engine pulsing with fumes and steam. How appropriate she was dressed as a rabbit, she supposed. A little piece of prey running from the horrible creature with _big sharp teeth_ and blood on his clothes.

She supposed she must have stopped running at some point. The bench she was sat on was neither warm, nor cold, both numbed by the thickness of her costume. So too was the deep breathing in her chest, all blocked out by the scared little rabbit that she apparently was.

It took her another moment to realise that she wasn’t crying. Her eyes stung, the idea of crying not being such a strange idea… but she just wouldn’t She breathed and breathed and breathed but she couldn’t bring herself to cry. It felt impossible, like she was too far gone to even consider such a lowly step on the ladder.

Her fists were shaking. The fabric gloves helped, in that regard. She couldn’t clench her first or force her nails into the flesh of her palm. If she could, she was sure she would find several small cuts where her nails had been when she eventually found herself at home.

Or dead at the bottom of a ditch. Either or.

But there was quiet. Relatively. The noise of people returned, echoing somewhere in the distance and Marinette settled for the cool October air and the rustle of leaves on concrete.

Until there was something else sounded a little bit better.

“Marinette?” she heard, once. Then twice, before. “Jesus, there you are. I thought you’d gone home, or something.”

“Home might have a been a better idea that sitting on a bench at night.”

“A little.”

Marinette budged over, silently inviting Chloé to join her. She did.

“You going to tell me what that was about?” Chloé flexed her hands, letting the knuckles lightly pop. “I mean, the guy was scary, I’ll give him that. But he wasn’t _that_ scary. The chainsaw wasn’t even real.”

… Right. Noting that might have helped, a little. Maybe.

Hindsight was nice like that.

“… Did _you_ think it was scary?”

Chloé could be gentle when she wanted to be – really wanted to be. But like anyone trying something new for the first time, it was no a natural instinct to her. Just as Marinette found it hard to consider the idea of being mean, she doubted Chloé was entirely comfortable with being… open. Or close to someone.

The only difference was that Chloé wanted to be more like that.

But again, baby steps.

“Because it might have been good to say that before we went in?”

Marinette sighed, know she was probably right. “You didn’t think it was scary, though.”

“Uh, no. of course I didn’t.” Then the ‘open’ part of being open seemed to kick in. “But I wouldn’t be a total bitch just because you thought it was scary!” she backpaddled. “And if I was, you’d tell me anyway. Right?”

That was also true… “Yeah, I would.”

“See? We have a good system.”

That brought about a little smile. One that Marinette imagined was all the cuter in the outfit she was wearing. “It’s worked so far.”

“So… you going to tell me what that was all about? Or are you just… like, that bad with spooky stuff.”

So Marinette told her. About the silly haunted house, about the day she’d went in as a kid and had to be carried her by her dad. How she had practically wet herself at the sight of a witch in a cheap store-bought costume and the Man with Long Fingers that probably wasn’t nearly as bad as she remembers it being.

How she doesn’t like Halloween, but she loves all the things that happen around it.

How she was scared that Chloé would think less of her, because Marinette was one of the people that Chloé thought were entirely too stupid to be scared by something as innocent and silly as Halloween.

And through it all, Chloé listened. Her legs fidgeted as the story went on, and it always seemed like she had something she wanted to say. Maybe a joke, or a light jab that might have come freely to her a few months ago.

But she just listened instead, until it was all over.

“So… I _shouldn’t_ have taken you into the haunted house?”

“No, you’re fine. I didn’t tell you. It’s not your fault.”

“I kinda feel like it’s my fault,” Chloé replies. “It feels super shitty.”

“Well, it wasn’t,” Marinette replies, laying her fluffy paw on Chloé’s hand. “I’m always saying that you need to be more open about your feelings, but here I am hiding something to try and impress you.”

“How’s that working out for you?”

“Pretty badly, I’ll be honest.”

“Hmm, yeah. Kinda looks that way.”

It’s quiet for moment, then. Back to just the distant sounds of the fair and autumn chill. But then, Chloé always likes to fill in a silence.

“You know I don’t care about you being scared of stuff, right? I say stupid sit all the time. Doesn’t mean I care if any of it applies to you.”

“But you _would_ care if it wasn’t me?”

She makes a face at that. Something between a cringe and acceptance. “I’m still getting used to this whole _being nice_ thing. You mean more to me… so I start with you,” she says, her lips forming into an almost shy smile. “I don’t mind what you do or think. I’ll deal with everyone else and being a hypocrite later.”

And Marinette smiled back at that.

“You want to get more food? And stuff?” Chloé asks. “We can just skip the house. And all the other stuff.”

She smiled because this person who wouldn’t have cared so short a time ago… did so now. And not because she had to, but because she wanted to.

And because she wanted to feel that way about Marinette and no one else.

“Sure,” Marinette answered.

Baby steps.


End file.
